


Grace

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Hell Dean Winchester, story in drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-19
Updated: 2009-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things Dean's done that he cannot talk about. Forgiveness might be a gift, but it's one that demands something that might just be impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace

**Author's Note:**

> A story in drabbles. Spoilers: S4 through "Heaven and Hell." Thanks to Nestdweller, and LJ friends who answered my questions about Dean's type.

Somehow he expects it to be different, and it's not.

There's still grunting and stickiness, the wild funk of hormone-laced sweat and hitting his head on the window crank, which prompts him to curse. "Sorry," he says reflexively.

After, Anna puts her hand on his shoulder. "Did it hurt?"

"Hell yes. My eyes are still watering."

"Not that." She gently squeezes his shoulder and he realizes what she meant. Her hand is splayed wide to fit over the raised scar. "Did it hurt?"

"Castiel pulling me out? I don't remember."

This one time, _I don't remember_ is the truth.

***

Dean remembers the first one. A small-boned brunette, the kind of girl that makes him look twice.

In case he missed the point, Alastair provided a running commentary on her charms.

He got what this was about. It was meant to taint every memory he had of girls he'd felt attracted to, girls he'd slept with, girls he'd loved. He'd never have a consoling memory of a pretty girl without an answering flashback.

This moment.

This girl.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. Then he turned to a table covered with gleaming implements.

He knew intimately what each of them was for.

***

So maybe it is different, even while it's not.

It's not fevered, last-night-on-earth sex, but slow, at least at first, and something like reverent.

To know that this woman arching beneath him has known heaven and chosen earth, has known absolute good and chosen uncertainty, has known destiny and chosen ... well, choice --

That she has chosen him --

It fills him with an emotion so overwhelming he doesn't know whether it's joy or sadness or something he's never felt.

Anna's hand pressed to his shoulder.

Maybe this is the hand that will pull him out of the pit.

***

Once he's back, it's nothing but lies.

"What do you remember?"

"Not much," he tells Bobby. Hellhounds, fade to black, claustrophobic pine box. He seems to sell it; that's the last Bobby asks.

Sammy asks too. "What was it like?"

He lies because what's the point in telling the truth? There's nothing Sam can do for him. He lies to protect him, to preserve whatever image Sam has of him that doesn't involve being a willing minion of evil. He lies because he can't face looking at the truth.

He lies because, it turns out, Sammy is lying to him.

***

Dean hears Uriel's _No!_, guesses its meaning.

"Shut your eyes!" Anna shouts.

Sam raises his arms over his face, turning away from her voice.

"_Shut your eyes!_"

Ruby cowers against a bale of hay.

"_Shut your eyes!_"

If Dean knew that the sight of Anna's true form would burn out not only his eyes but the memory of everything he's seen in his life -- from his mother's death through his time in Hell -- he'd turn his gaze directly on her.

But blindness would just create a nice, dark room for the movie projector in his head.

He shuts his eyes.

***

Moaning, she arches beneath him, and the angle of her neck and jaw reminds him --

"No," he rasps.

"_Dean._"

"God, no." He would pull away, but Anna wraps her legs around his, takes his face in her hands.

She makes him look at her. "You're right here with me." Her voice is almost fierce.

"Anna, I can't. I --" The stain on him covers everything, even this.

"_You are right here with me, Dean._" She shifts beneath him, coaxing his body to follow her lead, then she is straddling him, and the flashback passes. "Where are you?" she whispers.

"Right here."

***

"Dean. I know." She reaches up to stroke his face.

Dean flinches at first, then allows her touch.

"It wasn't your fault. You should forgive yourself."

He stammers. "Anna, I don't want to -- I can't talk about that."

"I know. But when you can, you have people who want to help."

How can she give away something that she no longer possesses? Unearned forgiveness -- isn't that another meaning for the word grace?

He's not sure he can believe in that.

He's not sure he'll ever be able to talk about it.

"You're not alone. That's all I'm trying to say."

***

Anna screams like she's dying, but the barn fills with light that cancels out the pitch black behind closed eyes.

She is dying, in a sense. Sacrificing her humanity to regain her wings, her cold marble perfection. The things she'd sacrificed to become human in the first place.

Dean remembers that annoying kid's singsong from _It's a Wonderful Life_: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."

He wonders if he'll ever hear that line again without thinking of the bright violence of this moment. Her scream and that all-consuming light.

Anna gone, and Alastair with her.

***

Gray clouds pile overhead. They form a dam, and behind it are all the words he's held back. Dean works on his beer, leaning on the Impala's fender, his back to Sam.

"I know you heard him. Alastair." Haltingly, he tells his brother the truth. Most of it. (He actually can number the souls he's tortured.)

Is this grace too? The ability to open up to Sammy at last?

Dean thinks of Anna's unwanted grace. Freedom from human emotions.

He'd take it in a New York minute.

"I wish --" he tells Sam, "I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Grace (Let Down Your Hair Mix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/88922) by [extraonions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extraonions/pseuds/extraonions)




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